This coming Sunday is Mother’s Day. Although the present celebration in the U.S. dates from 1914, people have been celebrating a Mother Goddess at least as early as Neolithic times. In Ancient Egypt, she was Isis; in Babylon, Ishtar. Many cultures have venerated various Goddesses as embodying what they perceived as motherhood. To the ancient Greeks and Romans she was Demeter and Ceres, respectively and was the deity of agriculture and the fertility of the earth. As the Goddess of love, sexual rapture and beauty, the Greeks called her Aphrodite; the Romans, Venus. Kuan-Yin is her name as the Buddhist goddess of compassion, while in the pre-Buddhist Tibetan pantheon, Tara is the Goddess of compassion. The Navajo and Apache venerate her as Changing Woman, and she is largely responsible for the creation of the earth, the Great Earth Mother, if you will.
During the time the Roman Empire was converting to Christianity, the early church sought ways to make the change more palatable to newly Christianized pagans. Someone came up with the brilliant marketing strategy of incorporating large numbers of pagan festivals and rites into the church and replacing the objects of veneration Christian ones. So, the celebrations and festivals in honor of the Earth Mother were incorporated into the Liturgical year on the fourth Sunday of Lent in veneration of Mary, the mother of Christ and also the “mother church.”
By medieval times and even before, this Sunday came to be known as “Mothering Sunday.” Today, it is still observed as a Christian festival in some European countries. In the U.K., it is the equivalent of Mothers’ Day in the U.S. Mothering Sunday never caught on in the North American British colonies and their successor, the U.S. probably for three main reasons. In the colonies now known as New England, the colonists were dissenters, that is, not members of the Church of England. As such, they went out of their way to do away with Anglican rites and liturgy. Added to this, most of the colonists’ time was taken up with the incessantly demanding practical considera-tions and quite often harsh realities of mere survival. Even after life became more secure and not just a matter of bare survival, both as colonies, and later as states in the new nation, it was still a close to all consuming cycle of work. There simply was not time for something such as Mothering Sunday.
In 1872, Julia Ward Howe, perhaps best known as the author of the words to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” organized a mass public meeting in honor of mothers and as a push for world peace. She called on all mothers everywhere to collectively put an end to war.
Thirty five years later, in 1907 Anna M. Jarvis, a Philadelphia school teacher began her drive to have the second Sunday in May declared a national holiday in commemoration of mothers. In 1912 she trademarked the terms “second Sunday in May” and “Mother’s Day” and founded the Mother’s Day International Association. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson issued a Presidential Proclamation designating May’s 2nd Sunday as a national holiday in honor of mothers. Wilson, and all Presidents ever since in their proclamations have followed Jarvis’s wishes that the spelling of the holiday be in the singular possessive to signify that this is a special family time for honoring their own special mother (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother's_Day and http://www.goddess.ws/ were major sources for this post).
So what do you have planned for honoring that special woman in your life, your mother? You can find ideas at the Library by doing a subject search on Mother’s Day. Other possible subject searches are: holidays, Mothers, and celebrations. As an alternavie, consider participating in National Women's Health Week with your mother. Additionally, there is the 8-week Woman Challenge which begins on Mother's Day. Encourage your mother to take charge of her health and fitness with this program!
However you do it, try to come up with something creative and special to let your mother know how much she means to you this Sunday. After all, she deserves it!
MAP
